Agua

The sun fries the empty lot like the homemade tortillas we eat in the morning. The bare dirt serves as garbage dump and a place to drag your dead dog and a soccer field for the neighborhood boys. Now it is a gathering place for the children to participate in a makeshift Vacation Bible School program.

My group of teenaged, white-skinned friends is in the center of a crowd of Mexican children. The children push close and get noisy; it’s my job to keep them back so there’s enough room for the skits. A small girl sits on my shoulders so she can see. I hope the bandana on my head keeps her lice from becoming mine.

My friends are performing a drama without words while our translator explains to the children what is being acted out. Ben is Jesus. He comes up to the other four, pantomiming speaking and breaking bread. The others open their mouths and eyes wide in response to his imagined miracles. But then they decide they don’t like him and they kill him. He comes back to life, and they are sorry, and he forgives them and gives them a big group hug.

It is hot. Some of the children have stopped listening to the translators and have gathered around a teenage boy with a guitar instead. He sings love songs.

The team does another drama. This time they try to get to the other side of the pretend chasm where Jesus is, but they can’t until he spreads himself across the gap, letting them walk over his body to get to the other side. Something about their feet on him makes me want to cry even though their killing him did not. Ben lies in the dirt until the children clap, and then he gets up and bows.

The girl on my shoulders, I have lost track of her name in the many other names I have heard this week, wants to get down. I set her on the ground and expect her to follow the other girls who watch the boy with the guitar. She tugs on my jeans and mumbles something in Spanish. I ask her to say it again slowly.

“Agua.”

I remember that Sheila, our team leader who does not like me because I am tired during the late-night sermons, said that we should not give our food or water to the children. I don’t remember why.

I look at my full water bottle by my feet. The girl will have to walk back to her home, if her home has fresh water. She will miss VBS. She will miss Jesus.

But then I think about her lice, her smell, her half-naked body and her skin covered with dirt.

“No,” I say, “No agua.”

She lowers her eyes and turns slowly and walks away into the burning sun. I know that I’m the one who has missed Jesus. I still don’t remember why Sheila said I should.